In kamikazic state and crisp,
Steered and wrenched from soft illusion;
Terrible, it's fragile, dust-blown shape
That carried it's fat world within -
...
In these nocturnal woods, my heart finds
The sacred light of a forgiving sun -
Her radiance through the wild boughs, winds
To the dark beauty of unending woman.
...
This eye-glass on Byzantine worlds
Of our own mythological fate,
Locked upon some distant star
Like Gullivers' gulping on dead space.
...
The house is empty and seems so cold;
Rooms are dying, winding down, all through,
Where childhood thumbled long ago.
...
I am called:
The times of destruction,
By awaiting star-manifold seers.
The room lay in never-ending
...
At twilight, I imagine her as before,
Assembled from posted fragments, gathered
Into an alphabet of her ways and more,
Until the female form is covered -
...
To see beyond this veil of stuff
And glimpse the things that I once saw;
To feel the same strange formlessness
Weave its way and create once more.
...
Should this veil between us ever part
To reveal love's course and astronomy,
Where the gentle ballad of womanhood
Sings soft and sweet within my heart;
...
Part IV - The Blossom And The Sigh
From this holy place I go
Unto a wilderness unknown;
...
There was a man lived in a house
Made of graveyard bones!
'But bones decay: Why not use clay? '
A young girl said, 'and maybe sticks and stones? '
...
'My child', said a stranger, 'come into my tomb,
There are lots to see and do in here, and fairies light the gloom;
There are tigers and dragons, and unicorns to ride,
There are pink baboons and elephants: but nothing here has died!
...
I'm an elegant sod, a chemical savant:
We're killers in flared jeans.
We are beautiful
When we're cutting worlds in half.
...
Lion, you fix your stare upon your prey
And sit, as some oyster-gorged demi-god;
With eyes like Death's nostrils, smoking hate,
And your fingers manicured like vampire stakes.
...
I gazed through the half-open window
In the dimmed afternoon;
And sombre, my heart set me dreaming
As I paced from room to room.
...
He, in the wistful air,
Turned away like sheets, twisting,
And still our love was inward, pressing...
As our hearts in displaced care
...
These wretched feelings I conjure
Only darkens the soul with regret;
This requiem; this Rubicon of rue -
These wretched feelings! I conjure
...
Not for the ceremonies of each day
Do I ring with wrongs, and look away;
Away to where a forgiving light
Brings comfort to the solitude of night.
...
Down below the waves that keep
My restless heart so incomplete;
Wet with kisses from the deep:
Swim with monster fuel, my sweet,
...
Where wild in the heart and mad with love,
Cold of all thoughts which were not of you,
As the moon, in its darkling embrace, always slips
From my fiery mantle and my every move.
...
My name is Barry Van-Asten and I grew up under the shadow of the great Sarehole Mill, a place Tolkien often visited as a boy; living nearby he drew much of his inspiration from it - there is a magic about the 'Shire' which is timeless and immeasurable. Books quickly became the greatest joy in my life, in fact it was Edgar Allan Poe who was my introduction to this sacred world! I immersed myself in the classics and began writing poetry at a young age. My early influences were: Akhmatova, Edward Thomas & A. E. Housman. After enrolling on a writing course and an Open University course in the Humanities, I became an undergraduate and completed a degree in art at Roehampton University, Surrey. The poems from my first collection of poetry 'Ghost Blooms' and a few from a further collection 'Night Flowers' can be found on PoemHunter. I have also included a sonnet sequence called 'Songs of Love and Infinity'. I also enjoy playing the guitar and have been in several bands. My other interests include: History, Landscape & Gardens, Archeology, Walking, Novels & Biographies, Films, Architecture, Ancestry and the Supernatural...)
Resurrection Of The Butterfly
In kamikazic state and crisp,
Steered and wrenched from soft illusion;
Terrible, it's fragile, dust-blown shape
That carried it's fat world within -
A sarcophagus tick, hear it crack
With sunlight spooned upon its back.
A Cinderella slipper; the Cutty Sark
Sailing between the earth and moon.
Precision filled waste - an engine of love,
Clumsily ripped it's world apart.
Nightfall and O how everything's changed:
Nature and dimensions, re-arranged.
But unlike the stink crazed filth obsessed fly,
That celebration of the Gothic:
There are no songs, there are no buzz ballads;
No embarrassing moments and no bad manners,
Which is why the fly finds it difficult to get
Into butterfly circles and butterfly etiquette.
Yet behold! Pharaoh and his aphrodisiac
Filtered by moon powers
Into a gossamer-sighing Icarus,
A testament of beauty's charm,
Soured by the need to explain
The difference between sacred and profane,
As some 'dressed up' doctor with sulphurous eye
Sat under the stairs by a dim bulb to break
Sachets of sea salt and stare through glass jars
Of bright coloured inks, and investigate
Nature's larder of breathless experiments
And the periodic table of the elements.
And in attempting the cathode resurrection
With veins sighing for Frankenstein,
I saw those wings beat once, and no more
One Summer's day to the song of a lawn mower.
Yet life sat blinking far away, and Colin Clive
Was as silent as the grave:
There was no 'It's alive! It's alive! It's alive! '
But life's intrusion will wound it still
Soldiering over the centuries
To flicker like Caligari's ghost;
To sigh, measureless at moon's kiss
And yawn beneath some superior pulse
That beats full stops and nothing else!